of northern France. Other strong elements in the elite culture of rationalist Iberian Jews were the secular sciences, especially astronomy;2 in the fifteenth century, the most important astronomer in the Iberian Peninsula was the Jew Abraham Zacut (1452–1510) of Salamanca.3 Iberian and Provençal Jews were often also to be found as master clockmakers and as manufacturers and repairers of scientific instrumentation for the court. Mallorcan Jews, for their part, were involved in royal mapmaking, the most well known being the map illustrators Abraham and Jafudah Cresques.4
As noted in the Introduction, Profayt Duran’s own scientific activity is of interest not only for the light it can shed on Jewish identity but also for what it can tell us about the transmission of science outside the orbit of the university. It has long been thought that Iberian science was relatively “backward” by the standards of other European centers. But as recent research has shown, that is a misapprehension.5 Iberian universities were indeed weak in comparison with those of northern Europe, but they were not where the practice of science primarily took place. Jews, in any event, were excluded from the universities, although they had access to Hebrew translations of some of the texts being studied there. In examining how Duran taught subjects like mathematics and astronomy, we can thus grasp how science in general might have been transmitted in a nonuniversity context in Iberia. In interpreting this material, we will also gain insight into the role of court patronage and into the practical orientation of the science promoted in the service of the Aragonese kings. Finally, in observing the multiple contexts in which scientific information was conveyed, we should also arrive at a deeper understanding of the ties that bound together the tiny circle of the Jewish intellectual elite.
In many ways, as a member of this urban Jewish elite, Duran was utterly unexceptional. His education and background were, as we will see, fairly standard for his social class. He was both a moneylender and a physician, the two most prevalent professions among the Jews of late medieval Iberia and two that were often combined. His primary scholarly interest—astronomy—was the most commonly studied scientific field among medieval Jews in general. His fundamentally rationalist and yet relatively moderate attitude toward philosophy and its late medieval Jewish avatar, Maimonides, took the middle ground in the contemporary spectrum of philosophical positions.
In another respect, too, his case was “typical,” or at least seemingly so: although (as mentioned earlier) we do not know the precise circumstances of his conversion to Christianity, we do know that in 1391—like many others—he was compelled to accept publicly a religion he rejected inwardly. And yet one fact sets Duran apart from others of his generation. Instead of quietly making his individual way in the world, he wrote works that reveal his intense inner commitment to remaining a Jew. Through those works, we have an unusual and highly illuminating opportunity to glimpse not only the compromises that might enable someone like him to live for decades as a Christian but the informed and polemically forceful theological justifications of his continued self-identification as a Jew.
To understand how he came to make the decisions he did, it helps first to rehearse what we know of his life and intellectual milieu. The next few chapters thus trace Duran’s biography, his professional life and teaching activities, and his basic philosophical orientation.
CHAPTER 1
Honoratus de Bonafide,
olim vocatus Profayt Duran, judeus
Born most likely in the mid- to late 1350s, Profayt Duran belonged to a relatively well-off family that had been settled in Perpignan, a city at the northernmost tip of Catalonia, for at least a generation.1 In absolute numbers, the Perpignan Jewish community was not impressive: hearth-tax rolls indicate between one hundred and three hundred families out of a total population of approximately eighteen thousand over the course of the fourteenth century, a size far below that of the Jewish community either in Barcelona or in Narbonne in southern France.2 But despite its small numbers, the Perpignan community flourished.
Under King Pere III (r. 1336–1387) and his successors Joan I (r. 1387–1396), Martí I (r. 1396–1410), and Fernando I (r. 1412–1416), Perpignan became a vigorous trading hub, its surrounding area having been transformed economically by the rising production of raw materials—wool, saffron, wheat, and oil—to meet the demands of a surging market.3 It was also a vibrant urban center, the second-largest Catalonian town after Barcelona. Jews took part in its broad commercial success; among cities in Catalonia, Perpignan was one of the two main centers for the provision of credit by Jews.4 In addition, as it was a royal seat, court patronage ensured a subsidy for Jewish scientific and other expertise.
Aside from its commercial promise, Perpignan was strikingly cosmopolitan, serving as a fertile meeting place and way station for Jewish philosophers, astronomers, physicians, and scientific craftsmen. Not only had it been the mainland capital of the island kingdom of Majorca from the thirteenth century until that kingdom became part of the Crown of Aragon in 1344, it was also an inland border city, set between Iberia and Provence and displaying cultural allegiances to each.5
Legally and administratively part of the Crown of Aragon, Perpignan had strong ties in northern Catalonia, in particular with Girona, Besalú, and Castelló d’Empuries, the three most important Jewish settlements in the neighboring province of Girona.6 At the same time, its Jews enjoyed close connections with the world of southern France, especially after the influx of Provençal Jews caused by the repeated French expulsions of the fourteenth century.7 Menaḥem ha-Meiri (1249–1315), the great leader of Perpignan Jewry in the early fourteenth century, associated his city with Provence, devoting a book to celebrating the Provençal customs of his hometown and deprecating those of the Sefaradim (“Iberian Jews”).8 Two important fourteenth-century Perpignan philosophers, Moshe Narboni (c. 1300–c. 1362) and Joseph ibn Kaspi (c. 1279–c. 1340), were of southern French extraction, with families originating in Narbonne and Argentières respectively.9
EDUCATION
Duran’s education seems for the most part to have been characteristic of his class. To begin at the most fundamental level, his knowledge of the Hebrew Bible was both comprehensive and subtle. Not only does he cite Scripture lavishly, but he does so with wit and elegance. By the middle of his life, he was capable of composing a Hebrew grammar whose examples are all taken from the Bible.
Duran was also versed in basic rabbinic literature, which he similarly cites regularly. His literary use of this material, however, does not imply more than a superficial training in rabbinics. Indeed, if Duran’s later description of an average student’s Talmud study is reflective of his own experience, he would have learned merely “some rules [i.e. the thirteen exegetical principles] and … the ways of give-and-take with challenges and responses.” For Duran, a comprehensive mastery of the Talmud is only for those few “whom the Lord calls”;10 for the rest, Talmud study consists in using its general laws to extract hidden rulings, and even that, he notes, cannot be mastered except by attending a yeshivah and studying with the scholars there. Elsewhere he refers to having done this himself in his youth.11
In religious philosophy, Duran knew both Jewish authors and those Muslim philosophers whose works had been translated into Hebrew and which had, in a sense, become “naturalized” into medieval Jewish philosophy. His precise use of those philosophical sources will be discussed in greater depth below.
As for languages, while Duran wrote exclusively in Hebrew, he would certainly have spoken Catalan, the local vernacular of Perpignan. He could also read Latin well enough to be able in the late 1390s to write his attack on contemporary Christianity (Kelimat ha-goyim) based on the Gospels and Christian scholastic writers, and even to include a critique of Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible. It is conceivable that he also knew some Arabic, for he makes reference to variant Arabic readings in his
